


Does Enchantment Pour Out Of Every Door

by Chash



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-09
Updated: 2015-07-09
Packaged: 2018-04-08 13:20:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4306602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chash/pseuds/Chash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke and Bellamy own neighboring stores and bet on who will get more business in busy seasons. Your basic fluffy AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Does Enchantment Pour Out Of Every Door

"Did you give my little sister a boob cookie?"

Clarke gets out from under the counter and flashes Bellamy a sunny smile. "It wasn't decorated yet. Until they're decorated, they're just regular, circle-shaped sugar cookies." Bellamy still looks dubious, and Clarke admits, "Okay, it had the first coat of icing, because who wants a cookie with no icing? But no nipple. It could have been anything."

"I can't believe you gave my fourteen-year-old sister a boob cookie," he says, but he's having trouble not smiling.

"She's fourteen, she's old enough to eat a boob cookie."

"Not legally."

"Which one of us is more up to date on erotic bakery law, Bellamy?"

He snorts and gives up on hiding his smile; Clarke grins back. "Fine, you win. I haven't even googled erotic bakery law."

"You definitely shouldn't, you get some weird results."

He laughs again and drums his fingers on the counter; Clarke bites back her own smile. She's gotten fond of Bellamy in the last year, since his mother died and he came home to take over the family business and the care of his little sister. It's obvious this isn't really where he wanted to be with his life--she remembers Aurora telling her proudly that her son had gone to college _and_ graduate school, that he was going to be a professor--but she's selfishly glad he's here anyway. Her days are so much more exciting, just knowing he's next door.

"So, speaking of erotic bakery law, I'm going to win prom season," he remarks.

"Don't be so cocky," says Clarke. "I get plenty of business in prom season."

"Are kids giving their dates penis cakes for prom now? Is that a thing?"

"You sound like you're seventy and confused about social media right now, just FYI. But no, no penis cakes for prom. But the college has a big Greek scene and the frats and sororities think it's funny to have me cater their end-of-year parties. I get a lot of requests for cakes with people holding graduation hats over their crotches."

"That just seems weird," he says, drumming his fingers on the counter. "Why buy an erotic cake if you're not even going to see the genitalia?"

Clarke loses her composure and starts giggling; Bellamy looks like he's counting it as a personal victory. "Okay," she says, when she recovers. "Seriously, you're secretly seventy, right? That's got to be it. No one says _genitalia_ like that."

"How do they say it?"

"They don't. That is not a word peopel use. They usually go with a euphemism." In the three years since she started _Discrete Delights_ , Clarke has heard a lot of excellent terms for private parts, as Bellamy knows. Sometimes she gets one so good ("the monkey and his uncles" from a sixty-year-old man is her recent favorite) she actually has to call Monty in from the back to man the register so she can go tell Bellamy immediately. "Or just, you know, penis, vagina, etc. Never genitalia."

"I think your customers are uncultured."

"I think your face is uncultured," she says automatically, and he laughs.

"But seriously, you actually want to bet you win _prom_? After you got stomped so hard on Valentine's Day?"

"I keep telling you, Valentine's Day is not a good season for me. People don't get erotic cakes for their serious significant others. I do okay with the cookies with pick-up lines, but those aren't big orders. And I stomped you on Arbor Day."

"No one knows when Arbor Day is and you were having a sale."

"I bet I win prom," Clarke says firmly. "Corsages are cheap, right? High-school kids have to buy them. They can't cost much."

"Oh, Clarke," he says, all mournful and pitying. "Now who's out of touch? Parents pay for everything. I can jack up the prices because it's worth it for precious memories."

"You're a monster."

"It keeps me up at night." He raps his knuckles on her countertop. "Anyway, I gotta get back. Stop giving my sister pornographic cookies."

"I don't have any other kind!"

Monty comes out from the back and leans against the counter next to her. "As cute as your weird, income-based flirtation is, have you thought about just asking him out?"

"Yes," Clarke grumbles. "I'm working on it, okay?"

"Uh huh."

"Shut up. I am."

"What did you bet this time?"

"I don't think we actually said."

"You know we're going to get stomped, right?"

"I know."

He pats her on the shoulder. "I love you, Clarke."

"I love you too."

*

A few weeks back, she discovered she and _Blake's Bouquets_ both close at nine on Fridays, so she's started heading over after she counts out, leaving Monty to handle cleanup so she can sit on Bellamy's counter and watch him sweep up and close instead.

"You could help," he says, looking over his shoulder at her.

"If I wanted to help close a store, I'd stay at mine," she says, cheerful.

He snorts. "Poor Monty."

"He's busy with prep anyway. Saturday is a big day for us."

"You're heartless."

"It's been said. Is Octavia around?"

"Out with friends. You could just ask if I'm drinking with you tonight. I know that's what you want to know. You don't have to make it about Octavia."

"If Octavia was around, I was going to invite you guys over to hang out at my place instead," says Clarke.

He snorts. "I like how you spend Friday nights drinking with your competition--"

"You are not my competition. I don't have competition."

"That's because everyone is shocked to discover erotic bakeries even exist, now that porn is so freely available on the Internet."

"You can't eat Internet porn!"

He grins. "That is an excellent point. Have you considered making it your slogan?" 

"Are you going to drink with me or not?"

"Drink with you, obviously." He tugs off his green polo shirt, and Clarke does her best to watch without watching as his white undershirt rides up, showing off his very firm stomach. She didn't start hanging out when he closed because of this, but it's definitely a factor in why she keeps coming back. He grabs a button-down from behind the counter, shrugging it on and buttoning it up quickly. "We still haven't agreed to terms for the prom bet, either."

"I know."

He holds the door open for her and locks it behind them. "Monty really doesn't mind?" he asks, following her down the street. There's a bar on the corner that's Clarke's favorite; she's bonded with the bartenders, and it's a popular spot for bachelor and bachelorette parties, so she's at decent odds for someone recognizing her as the sexy cake lady and buying her free drinks.

"Nah. He likes working alone at weird hours. He blasts Taylor Swift and pretends I don't know about it."

"No shame in rocking out to Taylor Swift," Bellamy says. Clarke smirks at him, and he shrugs. "I have a fourteen-year-old sister," he reminds her. "Taylor Swift is some of the best music I'm exposed to."

"How old was your mom when she had you?" she asks. She's not sure how old he is--older than she is, given his education level,she's guessing somewhere between twenty-seven and thirty--or how his family history shakes out. She's never met Octavia's dad, but she suspects he's not the same person as Bellamy's. If nothing else, Bellamy is a lot less white than his mother and sister, and it could just be genetic weirdness, but she suspects not. Now seems like as good a time to find out as any. 

"Nineteen," he says, sliding into their usual booth. "Conceived on prom night."

She grins. "Yeah?"

"Yup. So I have a home-court advantage for all prom-related competitions." He drums his fingers on the table, his favorite nervous movement. "My dad was going to college, but my mom was always going to stay and work in the store, so I didn't change much. He offered to stay too, but--they weren't really that serious. He's a good guy, though. Not, like, my _dad_ , but we talk sometimes. He was really supportive, after she died."

"That's nice."

"Yeah." He shrugs one shoulder. "It's something, anyway. Better than O's dad." She cocks her head, and he says, "I liked him, at first. He seemed to like me too, so when she got pregnant, she figured he'd marry her, but--he took off instead. I don't know why a fourteen-year-old was fine and a baby wasn't, but I figure we were probably better off without him." He gives her a wry smile. "That got weird. I'm going to get us drinks, come up with some equally awkward personal stories to tell me when I get back."

She laughs. "Did I ever tell you my mom officially disowned me?"

"No, but it sounds perfect. I'm excited." 

He goes up to the bar, and Clarke checks out his shoulders, the way his hair curls at his neck, and then has to admit she is absolutely pathetic. At what point did hair and shoulders become a thing for her? This is sad. She needs to work on her entire life.

"So, how do you disown someone?" he asks, giving her a beer. "Is there a form, or what? What's the process?"

"I don't know how official it was. She cut me off and took me out of her will for a year."

"If she doesn't die during that year, that seems kind of ineffective. Was it a symbolic thing?"

"She got over it eventually, decided she missed me, even though I was wasting my potential. I graduated from Princeton summa cum laude, and I was supposed to go to med school. And I thought about it, I did, but--I was good at it, but I didn't really like it. And Monty had this idea to start a bakery."

"Erotic bakery."

"No, no, he just wanted a regular bakery. He was a total stoner in college, so he had a perpetual case of the munchies. That's why he learned to cook, because he wanted brownies literally all the time, and he loves it. I told my mom I was going to decorate cakes for a living and she freaked out and did the whole, _no daughter of mine is going to work in a bakery, not in this family young lady_ thing." She grins. "She's from this total southern royalty family, I love her, but--she's got some weird hangups about class and shit. I was so pissed at her, I told Monty we needed a hook, because there are a billion bakeries. But surprisingly few erotic bakeries. So there was clearly an untapped market."

"Yeah, it's a real shock," says Bellamy, dry. "I honestly thought my mom was fucking with me when she told me you guys had opened up next door."

"We get a lot of _wait, seriously, is this for real_ business," Clarke agrees.

"Trust me, I know. My customers ask me if you're for real all the time." He taps his bottle. "How did you meet Monty?"

"He was in some biochem major, I was pre-med, we ended up in a bunch of classes together. Bonded over how much we hated shit."

He grins. "That's a solid foundation. And pretty awesome, too. It's hard starting your own business, it's amazing you guys are doing so well."

"My parents' divorce really helped, which I know sounds totally awful and mercenary, but whatever. My dad heard my mom disapproved so he just kind of threw money at us to piss her off. Otherwise we wouldn't have had the startup capital."

He snorts. "I'm starting to feel like I was lucky, having one functional parent."

"I had one functional parent between them, but yeah. They're ridiculous." She tucks her hair back, smiles at him. "So, what are you going to give me when I totally win prom season?"

"You are going to get crushed."

"There are plenty of weddings this time of year too. Bachelorette parties. Bachelor parties. I'm very popular."

"And I never get wedding business," he says dryly. "But fine. You want to be wrong, you can be wrong. What are we betting?"

"Dinner?" she offers, trying not to feel nervous about it. They've been betting stupid, little things, like rounds at the bar and free flowers vs. free cakes. It feels like an escalation, but it's not, really. Except that it would be dinner, and she wants that to mean something.

"Probably not a good idea," he says, sounding genuinely apologetic. Clarke tries not to feel too let down, but--she did really think he was interested. He seemed into her. "Breakfast for a week?" he offers, looking weirdly sad himself, given he's the one who turned her down.

Clarke offers him a smile, trying for understanding. He doesn't like her. That's fine. They can still be friends. "I could use some free coffee in my life."

She goes in at ten the next day to get started on decorating all the shit Monty made that morning.

"I tried asking him out," she tells Monty. "He turned me down."

"What? Why?"

"I dunno." She grabs her icing bag and looks at the array of goodies for her consideration. "I told him we should bet dinner and he said it was a bad idea."

"Maybe it's one of those single-parent things," says Monty. "Romantic comedies tell me having children complicates relationships. You might need to prove yourself with a grand romantic gesture. Tall buildings are a plus."

"She's his sister, not his daughter," says Clarke. "And she likes me."

"Maybe he disapproves of you giving her erotic cakes all the time."

"It was like twice!"

"That's still a lot of erotic cakes, compared to normal people," says Monty. He puts his arm around her and squeezes. "Sorry. He doesn't deserve you. Do you want me to cancel my date tonight so we can do ice cream and sadness?"

"That sounds terrible, of course not. Go on your date! I'm excited for you."

"One more time, but like you mean it."

"Shut up and bake."

"Much better."

*

On Monday, Bellamy comes in as soon as they open. Clarke assumes he's just bothering her on his lunch break (they don't open until noon; no one seems to want erotic baked goods first thing in the morning), which is kind of comforting, honestly. She thought maybe he'd stop visiting, because of the whole awkward dinner invitation thing.

But then he says, "Can we talk?" and she realizes he's looking pretty awkward himself.

"Sure," she says, frowning. "Everything okay?"

He shrugs, jerky, and she gets Monty from the back and follows him outside. It's bright and warm and nice out, but Bellamy looks like it's raining and snowing and sleeting and the world is about to end. He might be slightly overdramatic, as a human being.

"Jesus, what?"

"Monty's cheating on you."

Clarke takes a minute to digest this, opens and closes her mouth a few times, and finally says, "No, he's not."

"Look, I know this sucks, but I saw him on Saturday with--"

"The guy he's been seeing," says Clarke, smiling faintly. "It was their third date." Bellamy's sort of staring, slack-jawed, so she adds, gently, "He's gay? We're friends? It is impossible for him to be cheating on me."

It's his turn to open and close his mouth a few times, and Clarke looks at him expectantly. It doesn't exactly make sense--she and Monty are so platonic, it's ridiculous--but it at least explains some things.

Finally, he just says, "Okay, cool," and goes into his store without another word.

Clarke watches his door, lets out a small, slightly giddy laugh, and then goes inside herself. 

"He told me you're cheating on me," she tells Monty.

"Wow, I'm a dick," he says. "Did he ask you out?"

"You know how when a cat tries to jump on something and doesn't make it, so it licks itself and wander off, like that was what it was planning to do the whole time? It was kind of like that. But Bellamy." She considers. "Do we have any cookies that haven't been decorated yet?"

"Yeah, but they're all dicks."

"That's fine. Kind of better, honestly."

Monty snorts. "Of course it is."

*

Bellamy closes at five on weeknights, so Clarke goes over at 4:55. She can see the flash of annoyance on his face when he hears the bell, but it turns very quickly into a polite smile, and then melts into nervousness when he recognizes her.

"I want to get flowers for this guy I like?" she tells him. "And he works in a flower store, so he probably has really good taste. It should be something fancy."

Bellamy bites back on a smile, tries for the same businesslike tone she's using. "Of course. You want something really expensive for someone like that. The more expensive, the better. Like, a hundred bucks. Minimum."

"That makes sense." She leans in to examine some orchids. "But it also needs to say, _you're an idiot, why did you think I was dating Monty_. I know flower language is really complicated and subtle, I figure you can do that, right?"

"You introduced him as your partner," Bellamy protests, dropping the act.

"Business partner! We co-own a business."

"You live together!" he says, but he's laughing now.

"Roommates!" she says. She glances over at him, and he's got his arms crossed over his chest, grinning. "Platonic roommates. I cannot believe you thought we were dating."

"It seemed plausible."

"I wouldn't flirt with you so much if I was dating Monty," she points out, and he looks down, smiling. 

"Okay, yeah, I was kind of wondering about that."

"What did you even think I meant when I wanted to bet dinner?"

"That you wanted to hang out more! You know, as friends." Clarke snorts. "Shut up," he says, without heat, and rubs the back of his neck. "So, um--"

"I brought you a cookie," Clarke says, and goes over to give it to him.

He blinks down at it. "This is a penis that says _PROM?_ on it."

"Yeah, it's not really my finest work. But there's not a lot of room to work with on the penises."

He laughs. "We're not going to prom."

"No, but if I win, I'm taking you out to dinner."

"That sounds like I win." He puts the cookie down on the counter and comes out from behind it. Clarke's expecting him to come to her, but he goes and locks the door instead. Then he's back, right in front of her, grinning. "I really want free breakfast," he says. "We should probably just get dinner now. Rock-paper-scissors to see who pays for it."

Clarke laughs and winds her arms around his neck. He's solid and warm and just like she hoped he would be. "I'll pay. I can afford it."

"Don't you have work?" Bellamy asks, smiling and resting his forehead against hers. "You don't want to take time off. You're totally going to lose our bet."

"I'm totally going to lose our bet anyway," Clarke says. "It's _prom_. You're going to make a killing. I'd need a miracle."

"So you can definitely take a night off," he says. 

"Definitely," she agrees.

She doesn't actually manage to tell Monty she's not coming back for another hour, but he's already figured it out.

It turns out taking off Bellamy's work polo herself is even better than watching him do it. Monty understands.

*

Clarke loses the bet, but not by nearly as much as she expected, and buying him breakfast is no big deal. And it gives her an excuse to be at his apartment when she wakes up every morning for a week.

"It just makes sense," she tells him. "Saving time. Otherwise I'd have to meet you for breakfast."

"Efficient," Bellamy teases, and crowds her against the kitchen counter for a kiss.

She follows him down to the store, even though he starts work a lot earlier than she does. She can hang out and decorate and annoy Monty with her general happiness. It's fun.

"We should probably bet on who makes the most this week," Bellamy observes, unlocking his door. "I got used to having free breakfast. I'm going to miss it."

Clarke bites her cheek, trying not to grin too much. "You'll miss free breakfast, huh?"

"Definitely free breakfast," he agrees, and offers his hand. "Deal?"

"Deal," says Clarke, and they shake on it.

**Author's Note:**

> Also with some [art by windybirb](http://windybirb.tumblr.com/post/124319691956/i-brought-you-a-cookie-clarke-says-and-goes)! And also [Bellamy POV](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4039033/chapters/10387041).


End file.
